Ever had a dream you were a human pinata and were being battered by everyone you know as you dangled helplessly from some tree branch? If so, you’re not alone. The animation and effects team at Toronto’s Stargate Studios will likely be having the dream over and over again in the next few weeks as it works to recreate the effect for the feature Picking up the Pieces from The Kushner-Locke Company.

Stargate is handling all the effects for the film, which has more stars than the desert sky under which director and executive producer Alfonso Arau (Like Water for Chocolate) and legendary dop Vittorio Storaro shot the dark comedy.

Picking up the Pieces is set in a small desert village and tells the story of a strange charm which the film’s characters believe can bring about miracles.

The film stars Woody Allen as a butcher who kills and dismembers his ostensibly unfaithful wife, with the resultant severed hand becoming an article of faith after a blind woman trips over it and regains her sight. The project also stars Sharon Stone, Fran Drescher, David Schwimmer, Elliott Gould, Cheech Marin, Lou Diamond Phillips and Kiefer Sutherland, among other American, Canadian and Mexican talent.

Shooting took place in the desert outside of l.a. over about 60 days, about 15 of which were supervised by Stargate’s Wayne Trickett.

Stargate began post and effects work at the end of July with the goal of finishing the project in time for entry into the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The shop will handle several of the film’s invisible effects sequences, such as restoring an old church and creating environmental upheavals like lightning and storm clouds, as well as performing the script’s miracles, such as causing trees to bloom and wither, limbs to grow and fall away and acne to clear up and reappear.

Stargate will use a combination of practical and cg neon to turn the small village in the film, captured in a big-scale crane shot, into a Vegas-esque mecca for miracle-seeking tourists at the end of the film, and will orchestrate the transformation of a tiny Madonna statue into Sharon Stone.

The scene which has a priest (played by Schwimmer) dreaming he’s a pinata presented a challenge for Stargate to track the actor’s head onto the pinata while contending with the complex crane shot used in the live-action scene and the dust and confusion created by the beaters.

Just filming that scene was like something out of Garcia Marquez or Fellini, according to Trickett. The scene was shot at 1 a.m. on the last day of shooting, with just about every star in the movie assembled in the desert blackness to beat the pinata. The scene began with lights off and the mob launching into the beating when ‘Action’ was called. Lights were then brought to reveal the group whacking away with abandon.

The scene was captured by a 100-foot crane shot, which tracks down the street using a hot head 180 degrees out of sync so the camera moves in over the scene upside down, giving the appearance that the pinata is standing and the crowd is inverted. The camera continues down and rotates, flying down over the crowd.

Storaro apparently used his own lights and control panels, with each light gelled a different color and he and an assistant controlling each light on the street.

The shot was over a minute long, and perhaps it was the extreme desert temperatures over the course of the shoot but when the director yelled ‘Cut!’ the crowd just kept on beating. The director and crew continued to attempt to end the scene to no avail, with the frenzied bloodlust only quelled when Storaro turned the lights out on the mob.

To facilitate the task of tracking Schwimmer’s face onto the pinata, Stargate used a new mini portable scanner from Quebec City’s Inspeck. The shop used the scanner for the actor’s face and for some of the statue shots. The scanner captures an image which can be fed into the shop’s software to create a 3D version of the image, allowing the effects shop to track the actor’s face precisely to the pinata, screams and all.

Stargate is using a combination of Lightwave and Alias|Wavefront Maya for 3D animation and Discreet Flame and Flint for compositing. Stargate had worked with producers on a number of other features and was called in by the producer to complete the 40 or so effects shots in Picking up the Pieces.